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May 16, 2005
In The Good Ole Summer Time
Summer has always been my favorite time of the year. I like all of the other seasons but growing up in Florida, summer was what we lived for. I originally posted this to my blog three years ago (!) and decided to rehash it. And yes, I am avoiding the fact that I haven't yet posted my Rome vacation pictures from a MONTH ago. Gah.
Grandma's lake.
It actually has a real name but damned if I ever knew it. My grandfather owned a sand company and used to dump a load of white sand on the shore of the teeny tiny lake behind their house to make a beach. He also built a floating dock held up by oil drums and anchored with a car transmission. I cannot begin to add up the hours spent swimming to and from the "dock". There were alligators in the lake, which meant that the one-minute swim to the dock was nerve wracking if you put too much thought into it. The alligators generally kept to their side of the lake though. We used inner tubes of several sizes from the assorted tires of tractors. I can still vividly feel the pain of scratching my back on the stem if I happened to enter the tube the wrong way. Speaking of pain, the sunburns we received were noteworthy of cancer journals. My sister and I used to have two contests. One was to see who could get the darkest tan by the end of summer and the other was to see who could peel the off largest hunk of dry skin.
I learned to waterski when I was around 10. We started out on a sheet of plywood rigged with a tow rope. On hands and knees, we would hold on for dear life. The first time I got up on skis, I traveled around the lake (took about 6-7 minutes) several times with my dad yelling for me to coast into the shore. You must be kidding. There are alligators in here! I eventually learned to coast right up onto the sand. We would take off by sitting on the edge of the dock and letting the boat jerk us up and away. I eventually got good enough that I could start in the water with one ski. My uncle Larry had a Hoby Cat that we also spent quite a bit of time on. My sister and I would lay flat on the front of the pontoons and fly like goddesses of the lake.
Leggs Eggs
Our summer kicked off each year at Easter. My grandmother would throw a family picnic / Easter egg hunt for all the cousins. She gave us a Legg's egg (remember those?) with a new bathing suit inside. Needless to say, my bathing suits do NOT fit in one anymore. Oh the screaming and yelling and laughter! There was a swing in front of her old house that never rested. The kids sat at the kid's table for dinner of course, so there was little actual supervision, which was the best part. Once, we worked very hard on figuring out just how far you could swallow a pea down and still be able to cough it back up. I accidentally choked on the pea (go figure) and hacked it onto the floor where Bobo the dog promptly ate it (thank you, may I have another?). Dinner was effectively over because we could not stop laughing. Remember the fits of laughter that erupted spontaneously? And continued on and off for the next hour no matter the dire threats from your mother to knock it off?
Stray memories
Gramma's hammock, the bug zapper, fireflies, finding fossil shark's teeth at Alexander Springs, SAND, tanning sea shell prints onto our backs, Daytona Beach, body surfing, walking on stilts, the pogo stick, penny drops from the tree in the front yard, Roseanne Brantley, Japanese plums and drunk birds, the datil peppers I was dared to eat, racquetball, the public pool, riding our bikes through the halls of the empty high school, gigging for frogs, my uncle Donny's airboat, the enormous (20 ft tall) piles of sand at the sand plant, learning to pedal my bike backwards (sitting on the handlebars), sitting in lawn chairs with my sister cutting mountains of philodendron for my dad's greenhouse business (okay, and cutting the lawn chairs too)
Posted by DebC at 08:13 PM | Comments (1)
May 08, 2005
Happy Mother's Day
This weekend was gorgeous, so today (tonite actually) is the first I have turned on my computer in DAYS. Spent Saturday at a market in the nearby town of Caltigirone and today at something called an "agriturismo" which is like a Sicilian bed and breakfast. Fantastic food that is served in at least five courses over about two hours. NOT fast food. It was also in Caltigirone but it was in a rural part that I had not yet been to.
Anyway, so on to Mother's Day. I got up this morning and found my kitchen doors shut (odd). When I tried to open one, I got screams of "get out, get out!". Jake and Eli were trying to fix me breakfast in bed. They did a great job with waffles, cut apples and onion bagel with cream cheese. The coffee, errmm. Let's just say that a new pot was made as tactfully as possible.
Here is a bit from a little book called "The Best of Oprah's What I Know for Sure".
The World can only value mothering to the extent that women everywhere stand and declare that it must be so. In our hands, we hold the power to transform the perception of motherhood. Whether we decide to work full-time while raising children, stay home with our kids, or bear no children at all, we need to understand that any put-down of the decision to mother is a threat to women's choices everywhere. We should no longer allow a mother to be defined as "just a mom". It is on her back that great nations are built. We should no longer allow any woman's voice to be drowned out or disregarded. As we affirm other women, and as we teach our sons, husbands, and friends to hold them in the highest regard, we honor both the mothers whose shoulders we've stood on and the daughters who will one day stand tall on ours.(this little book is a supplement to "O Magazine" which I normally don't read but this booklet was worth it.
So to all of us mothers - WE ROCK!
Posted by DebC at 10:44 PM
May 02, 2005
Quiz Time
Reason why Deb has not updated in a MONTH:
- She was exhausted by her Rome trip.
- Her dad accidently took her USB camera cable and her pictures are trapped on the camera.
- She has been sick.
- It has been FAR too gorgeous here to get on the computer.
- Baseball season has started back up.
- All of the above.
All those that answered all of the above get a cookie. Because of a. and b., I am going to do the Rome/Florence trip later. I did break down and buy nifty multimedia card reader but for some reason it does not like my 128mb card. Dad left me with two full CD's of his photos though and I am about halfway through cropping them. The trip was exhausting and frustratingly short. We had a great time; it was very cool having my Dad come over here to see us. Europe is fantastic - I feel like all I do is gush about it. To share it with someone I know was fun.
Jake and Eli are back in baseball and loving it. This year they are on the Cardinals. We had our first game on Saturday and it was a bloodbath. 25 to 2, Cardinals triumph. Both Eli and Jake are great at bat. Jake has discovered that he loves to play catcher (I think mainly to wear the cool getup). We will see how long that lasts - Saturday he took a pitch to the nuts. There was a collective parental gasp but Jake is Jake and played on.
Spring has sprung and is nearly at the sprang stage - it was 80 degrees(F) on Saturday. The flowers are obnoxiously beautiful. I always promise myself each Spring that I will stop and take pictures of the roadsides. I finally did it on Saturday. Red poppies have replaced violets as my favorite flower. I feel like I am in the Wizard of Oz each year at this time. Poppies and yellow daisy-like flowers line the highway. I keep expecting to hear the Emerald City choir.
Retirement in five months. ACK! It is making me feel like a little kid. I don't know what I want to do or where I want to live. We will still be going to Southern Illinois and I think I have found a house (I will be applying for a loan in the next couple weeks - shhhh don't tell my financial advisor. He doesn't even know I am retiring yet, let alone buying a house.) in Alto Pass, Illinois. I buckled down and started going through junk again. I have no idea what I will do when the threat of moving every three years no longer exists. You will probably see me on evening news having my house raided to take away 49 of my 53 cats. I will be the little old lady with newspapers and junk piled so high that there is a two foot wide walkway in every room. I am pack rat, hear me roar.
Anyway, look for a post on my Rome/Florence vacation sometime soon. I have to get it done before my Greece vacation at the end of May!
P.S. Have you seen Kim's mermaids? Way too cute.
UPDATE: My USB cable came in the mail today. Drat it all to hell, now I have to actually write the Rome post.
Posted by DebC at 09:58 AM